Burr's Rosy Specs See GOP Victories this Fall

The Charlotte Observer is running a piece this morning about the GOP Lincoln-Reagan Day dinner where Senator Richard Burr spoke about the GOP's chances in November. He doesn't think there's a chance for Democrats to take control of the House.

With most congressional districts favoring one party or the other, he said, only 32 House seats are actually competitive. Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats to take control.

"I find it hard to believe Democrats are going to take over the House," said Burr, of Winston-Salem.

If you haven't figured out why local and state politics are important, just pay attention to what happened in South Dakota this past week. Newsweek has a piece on what has been dubbed the "forced pregnancy bill" and the "rapist's rights bill" by many who are angry and fearful of what might happen if we go back to the days before abortions were safe and legal.

If you think that couldn't happen in North Carolina, think again. North Carolina Republicans are just as anti-women, anti-gay, anti-civil liberties as the next state.

County commissioner Jim Puckett criticized what he called the liberal agenda of Democrats who control the board of commissioners and predicted county benefits for same-sex partners would be part of that agenda.

"It's incumbent on us to take back the county commission," he told the audience, "to make sure morality and decency remain the standard in Mecklenburg County."

It's more important than ever that we pay as much attention to local and state races as we do to those for national office. If we are too concerned about taking back the House in Washington, we could lose it all here at home.

Candidate filings close in a couple of days. I am happy to see many Democrats filing in what are believed to be "safe" Republican districts. I will spend time over the coming weeks highlighting as many candidates as I can and getting contact information published. It's going to be an important election year. Let's push, pull, fight and claw our Dems to victories on the local, state and national levels.

Update: The Washington Post has an article in today's paper that touches on the importance of the state races.